Blog Post #18

The apostle Paul encouraged his followers to put away childish things. Many today would encourage the American people to do the same. Self-centeredness and the need for revenge and payback, these are some of the childish things that are driving many Americans. We share more in common than the differences that we often focus on. Our fate is a common one. if we engage in either a cold or hot Civil War the country will remain dysfunctional and all of us will be harmed. Self-interest is positive, up to a point. But we have now reached that point. In fact, we have exceeded it. The values that we need to be acting on now or not fear and self-interest, but empathy, truth and the desire for unity. As John Lewis once said, democracy is not a state, it is an action. Now is the time for action. We need to act in terms of our values. We need to focus on unifying not dividing. We need to give each other a chance. Those who disagree with us may be our opponents, but not our enemies. We need to stop demonizing others. Division is a choice, but so is cooperation. If we decide not to cooperate, we can decide to cooperate.

As a number of different people have said, we are engaged in a battle between our better angels and our darkest impulses. We are good people. If we work together we can do almost anything. We have proved that many times before, but we need to have faith in ourselves and in each other. We do not want to allow the darkest impulses, such as fear, tribalism and self- interest to control our thinking and our behavior. This is the time for resilience. We need to be flexible. We need to cooperate and communicate with others. And not just with the others who believe as we believe. As I said before, we need to act on our values not our fears. We need to control the strong emotions that we may have at this time, fear being one of these and anger being another. We need to realize that the challenges we face right now are not permanent ones, and they do not have to be pervasive ones. They do not have to affect every aspect of our life. They do not have to control our lives. And blaming now is a waste of time. We need to hold ourselves and others accountable but not engage in blaming. We need to take care of ourselves to a point, but we also need to take care of others and be concerned about their fate, since their fate most likely determines our fate. And last of all, we need to keep some sense of humor. God knows we need it now, perhaps more than ever. Again, together we can do almost anything. Divided we will most likely fail.

Ron Breazeale, PhD